ORANGE

Dylan Karlsson

Courtesy of Seaver Center for Western History Research

the hopper pulls into the dark of the packinghouse, passes its first daily haul onto the conveyor, wrests open the clock. brushes through the groves the early few, in the dawnish haze accumulates, starts to become whole as the Packers are. from the trees, the growers to the pickers. the next crook in the chain passes the orange, so on to meet the Packers (waiting at the doorstep) and onward to the auction.

light fills the wash, falls between things. leaves

one of the Packers comes in late, rushing in through the dedicated door, assumes her whole again without a word, knowing any reason for her tardiness wouldn’t be heard adequate, a fellow Packer to her side, proud and with ego enough to speak for her, dons her with an apron and gloves, the company-issued ones, receiving a miniature nod in thanks. the Packers pock the hall with the word “box,” shuffled to the attendant rustler, still the AM.

ice to the needs of the reptile

the Packers move swiftly, arms following arrows in perfect arrangement. arms following oranges advance down the conveyor, unthinking. hands blur the hours. the sky sits still in its high window. they move by the crate, since to be paid by the crate is to think by it.

red iron of the lift, shudder downward

they pack until the high window grows dark, til their gloves are coated with dirt and pith. they pack their life by the crate, etching songs on the edge of each box. ticked by half a century by crates. they exit the packinghouse in a line, follow the hushed news of the foremen. whisperings of a local millionaire. a visit. pile out in a seam in the groves – the citrine coat of this land. 20¢ to get in the coach.

twittering on the edges

the Packers are careful not to bruise the oranges, working fast but delicately. They stick to their stations, on occasion passing through the beam of the skylight. the foreman oversees their work from above, platform. he thinks of lit candles in the dark, their lambent light gleaming orange. yawns up to the rafters. forgetting himself, he lights up a cigar. La Morena.

there is no leverage, start from there

restlessly pack the surpluses and slink by the seasons. some years they are itinerant, some settle in nearby colonias til they are broken down. they come from the east and the south, pulled in by advertisements by rail or ship. women and men from years of indenture, from Guandong until exclusion, from Sonora or from Luzon, after years of work in Jalisco. from after the war, or from before. from the suffocated interior nations, from those hills over there, a place called Saha’tapa.

bends around the rock, if slight & so the valley

hushed the assembly, culling and grading fruit by fruit. wraps up with the dusk, swept boards. the Packers grateful for the clearing night air, singing gently on the way home. the last, a wage to light the smudge pots, bellows the grove with smoke. this evening, the Packers spread to the sound of the rattle, the last man on company grounds. plumes of smoke merging together, with each other and the darkening lung, the sky. the last man on the company grounds, thinking of the Packers and left to the mounds.

Dylan Karlsson is an archivist, poet and musician based in Los Angeles and the Inland Empire. You can find his work at dylankarlsson.com.